It’s enough to make you want to hole up in your house and shut the door.

To cancel travel plans.

Husband and I couldn’t help but look at each other and ask, “Should we go?”

I know we were not alone.

Whether you were going to Africa, Akron or Alabama this holiday season, I wouldn’t be surprised if you, too, asked the same question, Dear Reader.

Do you go?

Is it possible the world has gotten too scary to travel?

Ironically, it has been the continued awful attacks here at home that has helped us make up our minds.

If two crazies can target a center that helps disabled people way on the outskirts of Los Angeles, if a driver can mow down 38 pedestrians along the Las Vegas Strip, the truth is bad things can and do happen anywhere.

If you really want to drill it down, I look at my friend, Clare, who is still on the rebound from breast cancer surgery, now helping her mother with a new cancer diagnosis.

Clare, Mom, and daughter. Three brave warrior goddesses.

You could say the terrorist known as, “cancer,” showed up right inside their bodies.

Where can you really go and hide?

You might add up your odds, your fears, your comfort level and make a different decision about traveling.

We decided to go.

To give our girls this opportunity while we can.

I look at our picture of our family atop the Eiffel Tower from two years ago. That same experience wasn’t possible for many weeks following the Paris attacks.

Atop the Eiffel Tower, November 2013.

Not everyone is going to agree with our decision to go.

You can put my own mother on that list.

Sorry, Mom.

The tiebreaker?

Honestly?

It was simply, life.

Some twisted person with crazy ideas of what it means to honor God or some terrible disease might ultimately get the choice of how we die.

But they don’t get the power to decide how we live.

Not in this family.

And so, we go.

Because we can.

On layover in Detroit, choosing travel and life over fear on our way to South Africa.

As we do, let me wish you and your family safe passage in the new year and the gift of cherishing this moment.